Every day, millions of computer users visit Web pages as they surf the Internet, some by seeking a specific Web site, such as to purchase products, and others by simply clicking from one Web page to the next. Many marketers, such as service providers and product manufacturers, seek to attract customers to a Web page or a Web site. Just as important, the marketers want to keep customers engaged with the Web site, or pages of the Web site, once a customer has navigated to visit a particular Web page during an on-line session. Generally, customers may browse various product pages, search for products, and add or remove products from an on-line shopping cart before buying one or more of the products. However, not every on-line session started by a customer ends with a completed purchase and often customers leave a Web site, abandoning unpurchased products in the on-line shopping cart.
Rather than selecting to leave a Web site, effectively ending an on-line shopping experience, some customers may simply suspend input activity without an indication of abandoning the on-line cart. Moreover, a lack of customer input activities on a Web site for some extended duration of time does not necessarily imply the end of an on-line shopping session. Without an indication that an on-line shopping session has ended, a marketer does not want to be hasty in sending a reminder email or other communication to a customer, but would rather wait for some indication or confirmation that the on-line shopping session has ended. The purchasing behavior varies from customer to customer. For example, some customers are impulsive buyers who complete a purchase soon after adding products for purchase to an on-line shopping cart. Alternatively, there are customers who take some time before completing an actual purchase. During this time, a customer may be comparative shopping and looking at other ecommerce sites, may be researching and/or discussing products with friends, or just putting more thought into a purchase.
Typically, an on-line shopping cart is deemed abandoned if there is no activity on a Web site for a fixed-time interval, such as thirty minutes. However, as noted above, the click-through rates can vary from one customer to the next, and the fixed-time interval is not an adequate “one-size-fits-all” solution on which to base marketing decisions. The follow-up actions by a marketer based on a determination that an on-line session has ended after thirty minutes of inactivity may create customer dissatisfaction, brand irritation, inappropriate timing for retargeting, and at least a poor user experience when receiving a follow-up communication for an on-line shopping cart session that the user has not in fact ended.